The art of failing well

When the federal government launched its long-promised inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women last week, many wondered whether it would lead to action, or if that action would go far enough. But regardless of the outcome, the very fact that this inquiry is happening shows that, as a country, we’re willing to look closely at how we’ve failed Indigenous women.

It’s easy to celebrate success. Focusing on failure is hard for any country — or person — to do. But it’s something we have to do, if we don’t want failure to lead to more of the same.

Hillary Clinton recently became the first woman nominated by a major American party as a candidate for the presidency of the United States. No matter what your political beliefs are, this is a watershed moment in the history of a great democracy. But celebrating such moments too often leads us to gloss over the errors of the past.

Our love of saying ‘sorry’ allows us to highlight both the bad and good elements of our history in equal measure. We know our country isn’t perfect — and we know it doesn’t make us weak to admit it.

What happens when we look at our moments of success out of context? What happens when we lack the guts to face up to the times we’ve fallen short — when we can’t seem to steel ourselves to learn from the past?

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to study with Dr. Frances Westley at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Westley, a well-known Canadian expert on social innovation, is fond of saying that if you don’t understand the historical context of the question you’re trying to answer, you’re not going to achieve the kind of impact you’re hoping for.

Celebrated author Malcolm Gladwell says that “we are bad historians” in the 21st century — that we don’t always give the events of our history the thoughtful examination that they deserve, something he explores in his new podcast.

Sometimes we fail when we concentrate on the lessons of “success” to the exclusion of all else. Lately we’ve seen a lot of literature coming out of the non-profit and tech sectors about the value of screwing up. Ion Valaskakis, author of The Magnificent Mistake: How You can Earn More from Failure than you Learn from Success, recently wrote a blog for Fail Camp, a Montreal organization itself dedicated to learning from failure. In it, Valaskakis argues that we don’t learn what we most need to learn if we only focus on success.

“Much as we’d like to,” he writes, “it’s very hard to ‘reverse-engineer’ and reproduce winning performances. Failures, once understood, are then easier to avoid.

“The next time you hear a success story, ignore it.”

Here, and for once, Canadians’ reflexive habit of apologizing actually becomes a national strength. One can argue that our love of saying ‘sorry’ and being humble allows us to highlight both the bad and good elements of our history in equal measure. We know our country isn’t perfect — and we know it doesn’t make us weak to admit it. When a new Heritage Minute dedicated to the history of residential schools was released, it showed up in my Facebook feed over and over again.

The inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women offers us another opportunity to examine the errors of the past, atone for the suffering they caused — and learn how to do better in future. That’s what winning countries do.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

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Ilona Dougherty is the managing director of the Youth and Innovation Research Project at the University of Waterloo. She co-founded the national charity Apathy is Boring, is an Ashoka Fellow and in 2015 was named one of the Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada by the Women’s Executive Network.